Why would someone prefer to be at war?

One very natural human tendency is to associate ourselves into groups of likeminded people and then cultivate hostility towards those who are not part of our group, especially when our groups disagree about things we take seriously. The more areas of disagreement and the longer the division, the more each group learns to derive its identity not merely from believing what it believes, but also from being “not-them.”

That’s why one of the most common strategies people like me use in trying to bridge such gaps may actually be the most counterproductive of all. See, we usually try to find common ground between two positions from which to build a kind of temporary cease-fire. What this approach fails to realize is that even acknowledging the existence of common ground is extremely threatening to such entrenched combatants.

When being “not-them” is as important to a group as being ”us,” common ground is unacceptable because it threatens to undo the self-defining idea that we and they are so deeply and properly alienated from each other. Thus, precisely the thing that bridge-builders see as the starting point is, ironically, the most bitterly dangerous territory for both sides because it risks undermining the war whose perpetuation is at least as important as anything else. Far safer to know who we are by staying at a state of total opposition to those we hate than risk losing our identity by admitting we actually have something in common.